Best Enemies
by confused-cariad
Summary: During the End of Time, the Master accidentally falls into the Time Vortex and regenerates into a child. Now half-sane and free from the drums, he reluctantly settles into a new human life as Rory Williams, partner-in-crime to Melody Malone and best friend of Amy Pond. Then the Doctor shows up and ruins everything. (Rory is the Master AU)
1. The Boy in the Garden

**A/N: **So this is something I've been thinking about writing for a while. Rory's one of my favorite companions and the Master is by far my favorite villain. Then I read this head cannon about how Rory _was_ the Master and thought that'd be the coolest thing ever.

This is intended to be just a prologue—the next chapter is four or five times longer. I hope you guys like it and feel free to tell me what you think.

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><p><em>Knock-knock-knock-knock.<em>

Brian Williams rolls over in bed and blinks at the clock. It's three in the morning. They're kidding, right?

_Knock-knock-knock-knock._

They're probably not kidding. But they're crazy if they think he's getting up and stumbling downstairs at three in the morning to—

_Knock-knock-knock-knock._

Brian groans. "I'm coming!" he shouts as he regretfully pulls back the covers. It's freezing. Why is England always freezing?

He shuffles across the cold floors and fumbles with the closet door. It opens with a faint creak. His dressing gown is shoved somewhere in the back, he can make out its outline. He grabs the corner and tugs it out.

It catches on a cardboard box. The box falls out of the closet, opening and scattering clothes across the floor. Brian lets out a string of G-rated curses as he tosses the gown on. He bends to shove the clothes back into the box.

He stops.

The box is full of small jumpers and tiny socks. Baby clothes. The tags are still on. He remembers buying them, remembers his wife prancing around the shops. For a moment he can very clearly see the grin on her face, the way she hopped on her toes with excitement, how she squeezed his hand as she towed him along. God, he loved that woman.

_Knock-knock-knock-knock._

Brian's head jerks up. The room is dark. The house is empty. He's crouching there like an idiot, paralyzed over a spilled pile of baby clothes.

He shakes his head, wipes his eyes, and shoves the clothes back into the cardboard box. He straightens. He kicks the box back into the depths of the closet. Maybe one day he'll gather up all of those boxes and toss them in the bin. Today he's perfectly fine putting it off for another month or twenty.

He only trips twice as he wanders to the door. He can barely see his hand in front of his face, so he's quite proud that he doesn't fall and crack his skull. He jerks open the door.

"There's a boy in your garden."

Brian blinks. There's a barefoot six year old on his porch. She's soaked from the rainstorm, and breathing hard, like she's just run down the block. She stares at him in that incredibly serious way that only a concerned child can manage.

He feels like he's missing something. Brian leans out the door and looks up the street, but it's dark and empty. He turns back to her. "Where're your parents?"

"At home. Asleep, probably." The girl hops on her toes. She seems agitated. "There's a boy in your garden."

"Is there now?" Brian holds in a sigh. He knows this girl. She lives down the street and everyone on the block has become familiar with her antics in one way or another. So Brian knows that the only way he's going to sleep tonight is if he humors her.

He grabs an umbrella from its holder and steps out onto the porch. "Lead the way, Melody."

Melody grabs his hand in both of hers and drags him out into the rain while Brian fumbles one-handed with the umbrella. He's soaked by the time they get to the side of the house.

To be honest, he's surprised that Melody called it a garden. It _was_ a garden. It was a bloody spectacular garden. But that was six months ago, when his wife was alive and he was the happiest he could ever remember being because they thought they were having a baby.

It's ironic that certain cancers can cause false positives on pregnancy tests.

Since then he's let the garden go. Now it's home to dried out weeds and the rotting vines of plants long past their seasons. He keeps telling himself he'll get around to fixing it. Maybe after he throws away the baby clothes.

By some miracle, the umbrella clicks open. Brian swings it to rest over his head and, after a moment, tilts it to cover Melody instead. It's not big enough to fit them both and she's been out in the cold and the downpour longer than he has.

Melody doesn't notice the sudden lack of rain hitting her face. Her eyes are wide. She raises a quivering hand to point towards the darkness.

Brian follows her finger, but only sees mounds of mud and dead plants. "What?" he asks, squinting against the rain.

"There's a boy in your garden." Her voice is tight and raspy.

"Melody, there's no one there." Brian takes the umbrella's handle and carefully wraps her outstretched hand around it. When she manages to hold it herself, he steps forward into the mud and garden mounds. He's going to have to wash his slippers in the morning.

"See?" he says. "Nothing here. Just piles of dirt, and mud, and—"

And a crumpled, black sweatshirt that's barely visible because it's soaked through and coated in mud. A tiny child's hand rests just outside the sleeve. The fingers are blue and unmoving.

Brian Williams screams the F-word so loud that he wakes up the neighbours.


	2. An Unfortunate Regeneration

**A/N:** Sorry that the update took a while! I planned to have this out yesterday or the day before, but this chapter ended up longer than I thought it'd be. Lots of stuff happens, including a few cameos I wasn't expecting to add until they suddenly appeared, and I didn't always know how the Master would react to the situations he finds himself in. Next chapter I'll slow it down a little and we'll see more of his interactions and thought process.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy it and feel free to tell me what you think!

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><p>"The final act of you life is murder," Rassilon declares. "But which one of us?" The Doctor's gun wavers for a moment, like the situation hadn't seemed so real until Rassilon dared say it aloud.<p>

The Master is ignored by them both. He considers slipping away while the Doctor struggles with his moral decision and Rassilon goes through another Bond villain monologue, but the exit is too far. He doesn't want to get shot while making a run for it.

It's not that the Master fears the Doctor's bullet. The man's a coward who couldn't take out a fly if it were holding a gun on him. But a sudden movement—say, the Master suddenly running to the door—might spur his nemesis into a decision he'll regret later.

So he's stuck on one end of the cliche stand-off while the Doctor decides which one of them to murder. It won't be him, of course. They used to be best friends. Sure, that was a long time ago, and he's murdered and tortured the Doctor's friends since then. But the Doctor _still _sobbed over his body the last time he died. The Doctor can't kill him. He isn't capable of that.

The Doctor suddenly flips back to him, cocking the gun again. There's a deadly determination in his eyes.

His hearts drop.

Wait, no, it doesn't make any sense. If the Master dies, the link is broken, and Gallifrey burns in the Time War. If _Rassilon_ dies, the link is broken, and Gallifrey burns anyway. Rassilon dies either way, whether by the Doctor's bullet or on Gallifrey. So there's no point in the Doctor killing him except to _kill him._

He's miscalculated something, misunderstood their relationship somehow. The ever-predictable Doctor is finally turning on him. Maybe this is revenge for some trauma committed during the Year that Never Was. Maybe the Doctor's done cleaning up his attempts to take over the world.

Maybe he just doesn't care anymore.

"Get out of the way," the Doctor says.

What?

He stands frozen for half a second, trying to compute the words. Then he remembers the Whitepoint Star behind him, buzzing with power from the nuclear rod, amplifying his signal to Gallifrey. The Star created the gateway, but damaging the reactor unit would cut the signal and send Gallifrey back into the Time War. The Doctor isn't killing either of them.

Oh, he's clever.

The Master grins at him and jumps out of the way. The Doctor shoots. The reactor unit explodes.

"The link is broken!" the Doctor cries. Gallifrey begins to pulse and fade above them. "Back into the Time War, Rassilon. Back into hell."

Rassilon's face twists into pure hate. "You'll die with me, _Doctor._"

"I know."

Rassilon raises his gloved hand threateningly.

The drums pound in the Master's ears, coming to their final, frantic crescendo. He needs to get out of here. The exit is right behind him and Rassilon will be too busy killing the Doctor to bother with him. It's the perfect opportunity to slip away.

His feet don't move. As far as he can tell, there are three reasons why.

Number one is the Doctor. After centuries of racing around the universe, battling and attempting to outwit each other, he's grown attached to his best enemy. It's a strange relationship, semi-protective but in an _I'm the only one who gets to kill you_ way. He's not leaving the Doctor to die.

Number two is Rassilon. Gallifrey's very own Lord President had just admitted to shoving the drums in his head and thus ostracizing from Time Lord society and any chance at a normal, _sane_ existence. The Master would very much like to kill him right now.

Number three is a simple sentence that makes the decision for him:

_What the hell, I'm dying anyway._

He stands.

"Get out of the way."

The Doctor spins on his heel. His face is shocked, but his eyes are hopeful.

They'd been best friends once. Would they still be, had Rassilon not shoved the drums into his head? He thinks they could've been. The two of them against the world, just like when they were kids… They could've been _fantastic._

But it doesn't matter anymore. Nothing would in a few minutes.

The Doctor jumps out of the way.

The Master throws the last of his life force forward. It sparks from his hands and hits Rassilon directly in the chest.

"You did this to me!" the Master screams. "All of my _life!_" The pain is starting to hit him now. He's using every ounce of strength to destroy Rassilon. It's killing him slowly, excruciatingly, cell by cell. His head is throbbing in time with the drum beat.

"_You. Made. Me!_" He can barely see. He'd fall forward if not for the momentum of his expelled life force pushing him back.

"One!" He can't feel his hands anymore. He definitely can't see. "Two!" It hurts to breathe, hurts almost more than his head now. "Three!" He's dying, but just a little more, just until the Time Lock closes again. He's stubborn enough, he can hold off death a little longer. "Fo—"

It closes.

Light consumes the room as the Vortex swallows Rassilon and the others into the Time War.

Everything is suddenly bright and blinding and still. For a quarter of a second, the drums are silent, and he deludes himself into thinking that he's going to survive this.

He's wrong, of course. Caught between Gallifrey and Earth, the Time Lock and the regular flow of the universe, he's swept up into the Time Vortex itself. And he falls.

He'd looked into time itself when he was eight years old. He had the drums shoved into his mind and he'd collapsed, screaming and clutching his head, until one of the elders had to drag him out of the way so the next terrified child could look into the Untempered Schism. He remembers it as the most excruciating few hours of his life.

He quickly realizes that looking into time, however traumatic the experience, is _nothing_ compared to falling through it.

He tumbles through the Time Vortex, screaming as it attempts to rip him apart. For a moment he sees everything, _feels_ everything. He experiences every moment of the universe in an instant, every possible outcome of every decision, infinities upon infinities of information.

It hurts. It hurts more than the drums, more than dying.

He spends an eternity in that agony, screaming until there is no more air in his lungs and no way to draw it in again. He'd beg for death if he could only breathe. Instead he suffocates on nothing. His lungs burn but he can barely feel it over the burning in his mind and then _everything_ turns to flames as he regenerates.

* * *

><p>He's vaguely aware that he's out of the Time Vortex, if only for the decreased pain and lack of falling. It's raining and freezing and he's laying in the mud.<p>

He levers himself up on his forearms. He's breathing faster than normal, but it's still not enough. His arms are shaking from the effort of holding himself up, but he's not shivering. He feels numb.

Bad sign. He's been out in the cold for a while, then.

He groans and pushes himself up to his knees. Even in the dark, everything looks bigger than it should. He tries to feel his face, get a sense of what he looks like, but his hands are stuck in his sweatshirt. It's far too long for him.

He frowns. His previous regeneration wasn't particularly tall, so this one must be _extremely_ short. But in all honesty, he shouldn't have regenerated at all. He'd thrown his entire life force at Rassilon, there was nothing left to regenerate with…

Unless he cheated.

He feels panic boiling at his throat. He tries to shove down one of his sleeves to see his arm, but it's too wet to get a proper grip. His breaths are reduced to sharp gasps through his teeth. Then he remembers _his teeth_ and bites down on the sleeve to hold it in place while he pushes his arm up. His left arm escapes the sweatshirt.

He stares at the fingers. Long. Skinny. Small. Dreadfully small.

He turns his hand over, as if his palm will tell him a different story. The hand is still tiny.

He _cheated._ He couldn't regenerate a proper body, so his _superior Time Lord biology_ made everything smaller. Less cells means less mass to recreate means the consumption of less energy. It was all he had left.

Gold begins to swirl around his hand and he realizes that _it wasn't enough._ Even after cheating the regeneration process and becoming a child, he doesn't have enough energy to complete it. In a sense, he's still dying.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

He is _not_ going to be caught dead with this stupid face. He can fix it.

The Master shoves himself to his feet and immediately feels dizzy. His body is trying to force a healing coma to complete the regeneration, but he ignores the feeling. He's started to recognize the numbness as the beginnings of hypothermia. The _last thing_ he needs right now is a coma.

He takes a trembling step forward and promptly blacks out.

* * *

><p>He comes to with an electronic beeping in his ears and an overwhelming sense of <em>wrong<em> making his skin crawl.

He sits up too fast. His head hurts, he's starving, and his body is still humming with the remnants of regeneration energy. A sudden pain hits him hard and he folds forward, groaning pitifully with his head in his hands.

Still child hands, he realizes. But he can fix it. It's just a matter of getting the parts to make a functioning laser screwdriver and adding some Lazarus technology. Then he can manipulate his age however he wishes.

Until then, though, he's stuck as a… how old is he? Five, maybe six? Having the biology of a child skews his sense of time. It's unnatural. There is a _reason_ that Time Lords don't regenerate into children and this is it. Everything feels different and strange and _off._ Rassilon, he hasn't looked this young since he actually _was_ this young.

"Hey, you okay?"

He jumps and looks around quickly, trying to take in everything at once.

Hospital. He's in an Earth hospital. It's 1995 and he's in a hospital bed, hooked up to a heart monitor that's beeping out his accelerated double-heartbeat. He stares at it.

"That's going to cause some problems," he says. His voice is wobbling and young. Innocent. He takes an immediate disliking to it.

The voice beside him laughs gently. "Don't worry, it'll be fine."

He turns towards the voice and flinches back the next instant.

It's _wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!_ Time bends around him. Everything shifts. It's like staring into a black hole, something he could have managed as a fully grown Time Lord, but can barely stand as a child.

He folds forward into his hands again, shaking. It's the Freak—the Doctor's pet Freak, the fixed point in time who can't die. But what's _the Freak_ doing here, sitting next to his hospital bed? What's _he_ doing in a hospital bed? Someone had obviously discovered him unconscious in the mud and called an ambulance or something, but now the Freak has found him. So what's he _still_ doing here?

"Hey, it's okay." The Freak's voice is carefully soothing. "No one's going to hurt you. You're going to be fine. Okay?"

He slowly moves his head up, peeking at the Freak through his fingers.

The Freak's smiling at him. His shoulders are relaxed and he's leaned forward slightly, concerned, but giving him plenty of space. He's trying very hard to be calm and comforting.

It all comes together in a moment. The Freak's a member of Torchwood Three. He isn't here because he tracked down the Master—his reign of terror as Harold Saxon hasn't happened yet and he currently has the face of a six year old. No, the Freak is here doing his job, because an alien kid with two hearts just fell through the Time Vortex. _If_ the Freak knows that he came through the Time Vortex…

He needs answers. He needs to know _exactly _what his situation is before he can start manipulating it in his favor. He needs to get over himself and be in control of what's going on. He can go into shock later.

He takes a deep breath, relaxing as much as he can. The initial jolt of the Freak's _wrongness_ is wearing off. He could probably look at him directly without flinching at the pain of the paradox. He moves his hands out of his face and sits up carefully.

"There you go," the Freak says, but quietly, as if not to spook him. "Now I know that this is probably really scary and confusing for you, but I'm here to help."

_I tortured you for a year, _he thinks. _The last time I saw you, you were cuffing my hands behind my back. You stopped me from escaping. You made me vulnerable to Lucy's bullet. I _died _because of you._

But he has to go along with it.

"Okay," he murmurs, fidgeting nervously with the blanket. Usually when manipulating people—humans, particularly—he makes himself seem _more._ He projects his intelligence, his cunning, his _madness,_ until he's the most feared thing in the room. He's a monster and he makes sure everyone knows it.

Now he's playing up the 'scared little child' bit as much as he can. He emphasizes his trembling, twists the blanket between his hands nervously, and refuses to meet the Freak's eyes. Every minute or so he glances at the closed door as if he'll bolt from the room like a skittish colt the moment something too fast or too loud occurs.

It's the most humiliating little show he's ever put on. But the Freak falls for it.

"I'm Jack. What's your name?"

Well he can't just tell him _the Master._ Besides the obvious reasons, he doesn't want it getting back to the Doctor.

"I—I don't…" He adds a tremor to the words and blinks hard to force tears to his eyes.

The Freak shushes him softly. "It's okay. You've been through a lot. I'm sure it'll come back to you." He looks like he wants to reach forward and comfort the Time Lord.

_Touch me and you'll lose your hand,_ he thinks venomously. But he's got the Freak wrapped around his finger. He scoots back a bit, playing up the fear, and sends a meaningful glance to the door. He tries to project _get any closer and I'll bolt_ with his body language.

The Freak gives him some space. He isn't a complete idiot, it seems. "Do you remember what happened to you?"

He fell through the Time Vortex and had a rather unfortunate regeneration. But the Freak doesn't know that. Probably. He needs to know how much the Freak knows. It'll mean less work when he has to clean up the lies.

He shakes his head, hoping that his innocent confusion will spur the Freak into explaining.

The Freak gives a little sigh and tilts his head back, thinking. He's probably wondering how to explain it all without _scaring_ him. _Rassilon,_ he laid on the fear too thick. Maybe he should try a different approach.

He sits up a little straighter, like he's pulling together all the confidence in his little body. "I fell," he says.

The Freak looks at him, listening intently.

"I—I think. Then something happened and now…" He narrows his eyes and scrunches his nose, like he's thinking hard and trying to remember. Acting quiet and scared has given him some time to think and a reason to avoid the Freak's questions, but appearing childish might get him some answers. Childish and curious, with as much _adorable_ as he can stomach.

Rassilon, this whole act is humiliating.

But the Freak nods. "There's a hole in time and space about two hours from here," he says. "We call it the Rift. Sometimes things from other times and planets will fall through it. Sometimes people."

He nods along with it. The little Rift in Cardiff is nothing like the Time Vortex—it's like comparing an earthquake fault line to the rest of the planet—but the results are similar. Masses from one time and place get flung to another. But the Rift is a short enough trip to keep the average sentient being alive. The Time Vortex has a nasty habit of disintegrating ninety to ninety-five percent of unprotected cells.

Unless you could regenerate them, of course.

"Nothing to worry about, though," the Freak continues. "The Rift usually returns people back to when and where they came from. It'll just take a little time and you'll be home before you know it."

"Nothing to go back to," he murmurs. He sees it all very clearly now—Gallifrey burning before him, billions of Time Lords and Daleks succumbing to the destruction wrought by each other. It's not how he imagined it would be like. It's not noble or magnificent. It's just… just death. Just senseless murder.

It surprises him. Senseless murder was his favorite pastime just a few hours ago. Something's changed, then, but what—?

The drums. The drums are gone. He hadn't noticed it before because he was too busy panicking about his regeneration and now the heart monitor is beeping out the rhythm perfectly, but they're _definitely_ gone.

He doesn't know whether to celebrate or cry. The drums tormented him every moment of his life, but that torment is _all he knows._ What is he now, without them?

Well, his head feels clearer. He feels more alert than he's been in centuries, even after the complicated regeneration. He feels… less violent, somehow. Less bloodthirsty. But that might just be the regeneration into a child. There's no knowing what results were caused by which variable, and it's _aggravating_, this not knowing, but—

The Freak clears his throat.

He glances up, confused, then realizes that he was spacing out. Right. Bigger problems to deal with at the moment. "Sorry."

"Don't be," the Freak says, "but I've got to ask… Where are you from?"

"Nowhere too interesting," he says as he scrambles to find an answer. He can't say _Gallifrey._ That'll bring the Doctor to his doorstep. And he doesn't… well, maybe he _does_, but not right now, or maybe—

_Rassilon,_ he doesn't know what he wants.

"Really?" the Freak asks. "Because one of my best friends has two hearts. He's pretty interesting. Any chance you're from the same place?"

He can't deal with this decision right now. If he wants to find the Doctor, he'll find him on his own. It won't even be that hard. He just has to take over Britain again and the moron will come running. Not like it was too hard the twelve other times he's done it.

"I'm a Tenza," he says. Yes, that'll work. Tenza are the Cuckoo birds of the universe. Their young float about through space until they find a habitable planet, where they take on the native's physiology and use a perception filter and minor psychic abilities to blend into a suitable family unit. Not extremely common, but enough so that he won't set off any major alarms.

"My ship fell through the… you called it the Rift? I fell through the Rift and my perception filter broke. I rushed the physiology change and it went wrong." He hopes that the big, grown-up words he's using will be overlooked due to his alien-ness. And that the Freak doesn't know how rare it is for a Tenza to realize that they're not the species they're pretending to be.

The Freak's face falls. "Oh." He looks away for a moment, clearly upset.

The Freak's emotional reaction confuses him. Then he remembers that the Freak doesn't know he's a fixed point yet. The idiot's been watching Cardiff for two centuries, impatiently waiting for the Doctor and for an explanation to his unexpected immortality. Maybe he'd gained some intelligence and realized that the Doctor was avoiding him, that his so-called friend had left him behind and didn't plan on returning. Then he got a call about a two-hearted kid showing up in a hospital…

He must've been so hopeful—if not for the Doctor's return, then at least for a lifeform Gallifreyan enough to bring the Doctor running. Instead he got a botched Tenza.

The Freak takes a deep breath and straightens. "Right, then. Nothing to worry about," he lies with a smile. "We'll get it all sorted and—"

A man slips through the door and shuts it firmly behind him. His eyes are wide.

The Freak stands up. "Hopkins, what happened?" His tone is commanding and official, but familiar. Hopkins must be another member of Torchwood Three.

"Change of plans," the man says in a thick Welsh accent. "One's on their way up."

The Freak explodes. "What the _hell_ are they doing here? We have jurisdiction."

"No we don't, Jack! You tried to call dibs and they ignored you. Did you honestly expect Torchwood One to pass up on a real live alien?"

His blood freezes. Torchwood One. He's familiar with their vulgar reputation, with their proud motto _If it's alien, it's ours._

He visited the base in Canary Wharf when he was Harold Saxon. He remembers feeling so clever, greeting the greatest alien experts of the twenty-first century and walking out alive and undetected. Now he feels like an idiot. That heart monitor might as well be a neon sign screaming _Alien! Look at me, defenseless alien! Come and dissect me!_

The Freak's looking at him like he's just realized the same thing. "He's just a kid, Alex."

"They won't care," Hopkins says.

The Freak glares at the door. "How long until they get here?"

"Ninety seconds. Not enough time to sneak him out."

The Freak pauses, thinking. "But enough time to hide him…" An idea catches him so fast that he hops on his toes with the shock of it. "Did you retcon the staff already?"

Hopkins looks confused. "Yeah. No one remembers the double heartbeat but us. Why?"

"Perfect," the Freak grins. "Okay, wipe the security cameras. We were never here. The people that found him are still waiting outside, yeah?"

"Yes, but Jack—"

"Tell them to come on in. I've got the rest." Hopkins doesn't move. "I'll explain later, just _go._"

The Welshman shakes his head, but obediently slips out the door. The Freak immediately starts rummaging around in his pockets.

"I had it, I had it, where'd I—?" The Freak yanks out something circular and gold with a triumphant cry and presses it into his hands. He flinches at the contact but quickly gets over it to stare, shocked, at what he's holding.

"Where did you _get_ this?" It's a fob watch—_his_ fob watch. The one he had as Professor Yana. But that's not possible because he dropped it when escaping the end of the universe.

"Professor Song gave it to me. Great woman, archaeologist, probably a time traveler, _massive_ hair," the Freak says quickly. He keeps glancing nervously at the door. "Amazing kisser too, but that doesn't matter at the moment. She told me to keep it with me, that someone would need it soon. You know how to use it?"

He pauses, unsure what the Freak's talking about, until he clicks open the watch. Someone altered the perception filter. Normally the watch had a weak perception filter to keep people from bothering it and prevent it from being opened too early. But now it's expanded in radius. The perception filter's not strong enough to make a person invisible, but it's large enough and complex enough to stop people from noticing small oddities—oddities like a double heartbeat.

It's perfect. It's far too perfect.

He doesn't know a Professor Song, nor does he want to accept this gift from her without knowing what strings may come attached, but he doesn't have a choice. His options are to take the fob watch or end up on a dissection table at Torchwood One.

He flips the watch closed and holds it to his chest. "Yeah, I've got it."

The Freak nods. "Right. Lay low here for a bit. When this all blows over, I'll come back for you. Okay?"

"Okay." He'll be long gone by then.

The Freak hesitates for just a moment before fleeing the room.

He lets out a long breath. But it's not over yet. The people who found him are going to come in any second now. He wants them to leave him alone, let him sleep off the aftereffects of his healing coma, but they'll provide decent camouflage for when Torchwood One searches the hospital floor. He _needs_ them, as much as he doesn't want them right now.

He tucks the fob watch under the blankets.

The door opens. His steels himself for another exhausting performance.

It doesn't disappoint.

His only warning is a long, high-pitched squeak before a dark shadow races across the room and jumps up on his bed. It's a barefoot girl in a damp nightgown. She puts her face two inches from his and stares at him with a manic grin across her face. Then she squeaks again and flings her arms around his shoulders.

"I _knew_ it!" she cries. "I _knew_ it was you!" She laughs joyfully.

He struggles to push her away, but she clings to him like an octopus. "_What?_"

She finally lets go of him and sits back on her knees, beaming. She's… she's _something._ Looking at her makes his brain go fuzzy—like when he looked at the Freak. There's some kind of paradox surrounding her, some kind of mystery. He knows right away that she isn't human.

"Melody," a man sighs from the doorway. He sounds tired. "Get off the bed."

The girl—Melody—gives a big pout before she hops off. The man enters the room. He looks like he's in his early thirties. His face is even more tired-looking than his voice sounded. He walks carefully around the hospital bed and sits in the Freak's abandoned chair. The perception filter works perfectly and he never once glances at the heart monitor.

"Sorry about her," he says with a small smile. "She's rather excited." Melody sticks out her tongue at him and the man ruffles her hair playfully. "You gave us quite the scare earlier. You okay now?"

He nods hesitantly. "Better than I was, I suppose."

The man laughs. "Yes, I suppose you would be," he muses. He glances at the open door before looking back again. "I expect the nurses are going to kick us out in a few minutes. There's some police out there who want to talk to you as well. They've been trying to track down your parents for a couple hours but haven't found them yet."

He really doesn't want to deal with police at the moment. And he's tired of lying. "Haven't got any for them to track down."

The man's eyebrows raise, but he doesn't look particularly surprised. "Yes, that's what they've been thinking. Who takes care of you, then? I can give them a call. I'm sure they're worried about you."

He shrugs, too exhausted to make a big deal of it. "There's no one, really. Just me."

Now the man _does_ look surprised. "How long have you been on your own?"

_Centuries. _

"I don't know. A while."

There's real concern across the man's features. Melody hops up on his bed again.

"I was alone for a while," she declares with a bright grin. "Then I got adopted and everything got better." She turns playfully back to the man. "_You_ should adopt him, Mr. Williams!"

The man looks frazzled by the sudden suggestion. His face starts to turn red. "Melody, I don't think—" Mr. Williams stumbles over more words and phrases, each more intelligible than the last.

He tunes out the man's babbling to stare at Melody, who's grinning at him wickedly. He gets the feeling that she knows something he doesn't.

"It's okay, Mr. Williams," Melody finally interrupts. "I get it." She quickly turns the conversation around to the topic of her new crayon set and Mr. Williams relaxes some. Melody talks a million miles an hour and doesn't let anyone else fill the space. It's a relief because it means that he doesn't have to say anything.

A nurse eventually _does_ come to kick them out. She's shocked that he's awake and that Mr. Williams and Melody managed to get in. Mr. Williams looks confused.

"Sorry, I thought you knew he was up. A man told us we could come right in."

"_What_ man? It wasn't one of us. We thought he was still unconscious."

"But he—Oh, I suppose it doesn't matter." Mr. Williams stands up. "Come along, Melody."

The girl reluctantly gets off the bed. "We can come back tomorrow, right?" She turns and gives him a pointed look. "_Right?_"

He doesn't know what Melody wants from him. What he _does_ know is that he needs to throw a laser screwdriver and some Lazarus technology together as soon as possible. He doesn't think he can do that with twenty-first century Earth technology, but if he's right and Melody's not human…

"Please?" he asks, turning to Mr. Williams. The man's heart melts before his eyes.

"Yes. We'll come back."

Melody laughs and hops up and down. "We should bring Amelia next time! He'll _like_ Amelia." She gives him another wicked grin that he doesn't know what to make of.

"If it's okay with him, we'll bring Amelia." Mr. Williams turns to him. "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name."

He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. For two seconds, every name he's ever known completely disappears from his mind and he can't think of one that will work. Melody saves him.

"Rory," she says. "His name's Rory."


	3. Becoming Rory Williams (1 of 3)

**A/N:** I would like to blame the tardiness of this chapter on Finals Week, school in general, my job, Dark Siders II, youTube, the current position of the United States economy, the science of astronomy, and small ducks. Obviously this was in no way my own fault and it is entirely the liability of the previous items listed.

In all honesty, though, what I thought was going to be one chapter turned into something incredibly long. This will be the first of two or three chapters focused on the Master's/Rory's life as he settles into being a human. I'm sorry for the wait and I hope that it was maybe sort of possibly worth it!

* * *

><p>He needs to get out of here before he implodes. As soon as Melody and Mr. Williams left, he was swarmed by doctors and police, all wanting to know who he was and what he was doing unconscious in a rainstorm in the middle of the night. Normally he'd bask in the attention, play up the lies just to watch their reactions, but right now he's exhausted.<p>

It's calmed down a bit, but a curious nurse will still poke her head in every ten minutes. A few of them even sit in and try to talk to him. He thinks there's a roster somewhere and they've all signed up, taking turns checking up on him to make sure he doesn't get too lonely.

It's aggravating. All the attention on him makes it impossible to start searching for screwdriver parts. He hasn't even had time to take apart and scavenge the heart monitor for wiring. And he's going to need a hell of a lot more than _wiring_ if he's going to put together a Lazarus device…

At this rate, he's going to be a child for days, even _weeks_, longer than he planned for. He feels ready to scream.

So when Melody hops on his bed that afternoon with her notorious new crayon set and a tree's worth of white paper, he's reached the end of his _nice_ limit. And when Mr. Williams doesn't immediately follow her around the corner, he loses even the pretense of politeness.

"Can we stop playing?" he asks. "I know you're not human." Melody settles right next to him, leaning against the bed's headboard, and drops half of the paper into his lap.

"I'm more human than you are," she says as she opens her box of crayons. She turns it upside down and they scatter across the bedclothes. "Just scribble a bit. Try not to do anything too da Vinci, because there's a woman with an earpiece downstairs and she keeps peeking into the rooms."

So Torchwood One is still looking for him. He'd seen traces of them the night before—smartly dressed men and woman walking about with beeping handhelds. They'd looked into every room, but their eyes conveniently glazed over when they checked his. None noticed the double-pulse on his heart monitor.

Just in case, he takes the fob watch from where he'd hidden it under his pillow the night before and tucks it under his knee. Close proximity will help the perception field.

Then he sighs and reluctantly picks up a crayon. No harm in joining in, he supposes. It's just camouflage. He's pretending to be a human kid, so if he has to waste paper to do so, he'll waste some paper. He starts scribbling, letting his mind wander, until he remembers something that's been bothering him all day.

"Yesterday," he says, "you said that you _knew it was me_, like you recognized me. But I don't know you. You've never met me."

"I have," Melody says. "Or I will, I suppose. Time's a bit confusing around you, isn't it?"

"No, you don't understand. You've got me mixed up with someone else."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because you _hugged_ me," he says. "I get a lot of reactions when I walk into a room. Usually it's screaming and cowering—"

"Oh, right, because you're _so_ scary," Melody says sarcastically. He ignores her and continues on.

"—but people don't _hug_ me. You must have me confused with someone else, because no one's ever _happy_ to see me."

Melody puts down her crayon and turns to face him, all humour gone from her face. He starts to get that fuzzy feeling in his head again, that little voice that whispers _paradox._ He wonders what she is for the thousandth time. _I'm more human than you are,_ she'd said, but did she mean in physiology or actual genetics?

"One day they will be," she says, ever mysterious. An explosive, childish giggle echoes from outside the room. Melody picks up her crayon again. "That's Mr. Williams and Amelia. Try to play nice. They're going to be important to you."

His stomach turns as her words start to sink in.

"You _know_ me," he breathes. "An older me—a _future_ me."

"I know _of_ you," Melody says quickly. "I've only seen you once, but that's a long time ago for me and a long way in the future for you. Now hush up, they're coming."

He has a billion questions bubbling at his throat. How does his future relate to this strange little girl? How does that stuttering idiot from yesterday become _important_ to him?

Who the hell is Amelia?

He swallows down each one as the new arrivals turn the corner.

Mr. Williams looks marginally less tired today. He has a little ginger girl attached to his arm. Instead of walking alongside him, she waits until she's a few feet behind him. Then she picks up her legs, laughing as he swings her forward and ahead of him. Still giggling, she plants her feet until Mr. Williams walks ahead of her and she's in position for the next swing.

He's smiling at her, softly and fondly, but he seems distant. His thoughts are on something else. He looks sad.

He finally glances up. "Melody, don't run off like that," he scolds gently. He's still smiling. "I thought we'd lost you back at the elevator."

Melody shrugs. "Sorry." She doesn't look apologetic.

The ginger girl detaches herself from Mr. Williams to scramble up the edge of the bed. Though she looks about the same age as Melody, she's visibly shorter and struggles a bit with the climb. Melody has to lean over to help pull her up.

The ginger finally settles sitting across from Melody. She's staring at him, delighted and overwhelmingly curious. He can tell right away that she's human.

"Hi. I'm Amelia Pond."

_Try to play nice. They're going to be important to you._

He honestly can't remember the last time someone was _important_ to him. Especially a human someone. Looking at this small, ordinary Scottish girl, he never would've guessed that she would mean something to him one day.

"Rory," he greets. The name is stupid but it's all he has. It's not like he can go around calling himself _the Master_ when masquerading as a human child_._ Besides, he's been called _Rory_ enough over the past twenty-four hours that the name is starting to stick. He even responds to it most of the time. "Just Rory."

She grins at him. There's a gap in her mouth from a recently lost baby tooth. "Hello, Rory Just Rory." She looks around, impatiently awaiting the roaring laughter.

What she gets in a snort from Melody and a soft chuckle from Mr. Williams as he settles into his chair from the night before. Amelia pouts until Melody hands her a good chunk of the paper and points out the scattered crayons. Amelia grabs a few and her good mood returns.

"Thanks for convincing Aunt Sharon to let me come, Mr. Williams," she says suddenly. "I really thought she was going to tell me no until you talked to her."

"Mine too," Melody adds. "My parents were really mad at me for disappearing in the middle of the night. Thanks for explaining everything to them, Mr. Williams."

The man shrugs, looking embarrassed from the praise. "Well, we couldn't leave Rory all alone now, could we?"

Both girls cheerfully agree.

He wonders why. They don't know who he is or what he's like or even where he came from. And if they did they'd hate him. Yet here they are, Melody leaning into his side as she colours a stick-figure puppy while Amelia shyly glances up at him through her hair. Brian settles back in his chair with a gardening magazine.

They talk a lot—mostly Amelia and Melody, but Brian will chip in every once in a while. He stays quiet. He sits and scribbles and listens. They don't seem like they expect him to talk, but they still try to include him in the conversation. It's not pressuring, or even irritating, it just… _is._

It's weird. He's still trying to decide if it's a bad weird.

* * *

><p>Mr. Williams comes every afternoon after that, usually with Amelia and Melody in tow. Melody always brings her crayons and a large stack of paper. Amelia sometimes brings children's books. She lets Rory flip through them, and even offered to lend him her coveted favorite, <em>The Legend of Pandora's Box.<em> She's a little obsessed with Roman mythology.

It takes nearly a week for the attention around him to die down. Now he can go most of the night without a nurse checking up on him. He uses that time to dismantle the heart monitor and scavenge it for spare parts. There're so many useless pieces in it, he's really not taking anything that would be missed.

When he's permanently borrowed everything he can from the heart monitor, he gets braver. He starts slipping out of his little hospital room in the middle of the night. He wanders the corridors, partially to take apart any unguarded piece of machinery for screwdriver parts, mostly because he's bored and restless from being stuck in a single room all day. He used to have all of time and space at his fingertips. It's unsettling to suddenly lose it.

As the days pass, he overhears the hospital staff whispering about him with increasing frequency. Everyone's gossiping in the halls, wondering what's going to become of the little kid they found half-dead on the street. There's talk about boys' homes and foster families.

A social worker comes to speak to him, but she doesn't really discuss his situation or his options (probably because he's "too young" to have an opinion on them). She just prattles on and on and tries to get him to speak to her. She really wants to _get to know him_ and _be his friend. _He doesn't say a word. He can tell that she's irritated and a little disappointed by his silence and he feels overwhelmingly accomplished.

Is that childish? Definitely. No matter his age, he's never excelled at being mature.

Besides, he knows that he's not going to a boys' home or some foster family half way across the country. Mr. Williams won't let that happen.

He'll admit that he doesn't know a lot about Mr. Williams, but he knows three important facts. Number one is that the man loves gardening. That one's not quite _important_, per se, but the gardening thing borders on obsession. He should be prepared for what he's getting into.

Number two is that his wife died eight months ago. He discovered this fun bit of trivia after getting bored and breaking into the hospital's patient archives. What they thought was a pregnancy turned out to be a false positive test result caused by stage four ovarian cancer. It was too late to save her. She died ten weeks later.

Fact number three is that Brian Williams is a father. He doesn't have a single family member to his name, let alone a child, but some people are just natural parents. Rory sees it in the way that Mr. Williams jokes with Amelia, in how he ruffles Melody's hair and gently scolds the child's bad behavior. He sees it in how the man talks to him.

So Rory's not going anywhere, because Mr. Williams is a father, and fathers don't leave children behind.

* * *

><p>Two days later he spies Mr. Williams talking to his social worker in the hallway outside his hospital room.<p>

Three days after that, Mr. Williams asks Rory if he wants to stay with him. He doesn't mention adopting or fostering or what the circumstances will be. The man probably doesn't even know yet himself-this is probably some kind of insane special circumstance case in the adoption industry that no one knows what to do with or how to handle. But it's offered. Rory acts surprised and accepts.

He's scheduled to leave the hospital the very next day. Mr. Williams comes to pick him up that afternoon with—for some reason—Amelia at his heels.

The ginger spends ten seconds or so trying to climb onto the hospital bed. Rory eventually pities her clumsy attempts enough to lean over and help pull her up. She gives him a quick bear hug, then sits next to him, close enough that she's practically plastered to his side. Like most children, Amelia has not yet learned the concept of _personal space._

"Hi," she says.

"Hi." He tries to scoot back a bit, but she just leans in closer. He reluctantly resigns himself to the forced cuddling. "Where's Melody?"

"She got in trouble," Amelia sighs. "_Again_."

"What'd she do?"

"Our class had a hamster," she explains. "She let him out. Now he's stuck in the walls or something. We can hear him crawling about, sometimes, but no one can get him out of the wall. Poor Cow."

"I thought it was a hamster."

"His name's Cow."

"Oh." Mr. Williams is talking to a doctor just outside the room, but they're practically whispering. It makes lip reading rather difficult. "Does he look like a cow?"

"No. He's small and sort of orange."

"Of course he is."

A nurse slips past Mr. Williams and the doctor to enter the room. She's pushing a wheelchair. It's hospital policy that patients have to be wheeled out, which never made sense to Rory. He's fine now, he can walk and run and jump and everything, but they won't let him. It's the definition of adding insult to injury.

"Hey there, Rory," the nurse says sweetly. She has the pleasant, falsely cheerful smile of an exhausted woman who works with children far too often. "You ready to get out of here?"

He nods quickly. Oh, he _regenerated_ ready.

The nurse waves Amelia away from him (thank Rassilon) and starts unclipping his heart monitor. He doesn't have an IV line for her to take out, so her job is quickly done. She says goodbye and slips out like she was never there, leaving the wheelchair sitting beside his bed.

He sits there. The heart monitor is finally silent. It's quiet. It's far. Too. Quiet.

"You okay, Rory?" Amelia asks.

"Fine." He clenches his hands to minimize the shaking. He'd forgotten.

The drums are gone.

Of course, they've been gone since his regeneration, but he's tried not to think about it. It wasn't too hard, not when the heart monitor was beeping out the rhythm. Not when he could close his eyes and let his thoughts go fuzzy and _pretend_ that the drums were still there. But now even that inadequate beeping gone. He hasn't experienced this kind of silence for nearly a millennia. It's almost terrifying.

"_Rory?_"

"What are your parents like?" he asks suddenly. He couldn't care less about this stupid Scottish girl, but he needs to get her talking. He needs the _noise,_ some kind of sound to cover up that dreaded silence. And, if he's learned anything from being around humans, it's that they _love_ to talk about themselves.

Amelia doesn't say a word for nearly five seconds. His hearts are playing hopscotch in his chest. _Rassilon_, if she doesn't talk soon, he thinks he's going to have a panic attack. That would be utterly pathetic of him.

"My parents are dead," she says.

_Oh, well that's just _great. _Thank you, Amelia, for sharing that information with _as little detail and words _as you possibly could._

"Sorry," he says automatically. (That _is_ what you're supposed to say, right?) "Do you remember anything about them? Or… or the house or where you lived or… anything?"

She's looking at him funny. Her brow is furrowed and she's biting one side of her lip. He doesn't know if she's concerned about him or questioning his sanity. "Are you okay?"

"I said I was fine." He curls his knees up nearly to his chest and tells himself to _breathe._ He has an incredibly advanced biology complete with a respiratory bypass system. Taking in air shouldn't be this _hard._

Amelia stares at him for another few seconds before grabbing his shaking hand from where it's clenched on his knee. She brings the appendage back down to his side and carefully unfolds his fingers. Then, when his hand is open, she slips her fingers between the gaps of his.

He refuses to wax poetic on _the comfort of human contact _or whatever these slightly evolved primates want to call it. But she squeezes his hand and smiles at him with her gapped teeth and he feels exactly that. Comforted.

"I liked Scotland better," she says. "I liked my house. The floors were slippery enough for me to slide on in my socks. And there was a bird house right outside my window. And my mum's old doll house was in my room. I loved that doll house. It was too big to come to England. So were the floors and the bird house. The stove I didn't like as much, because I burned myself on it one time when—"

Amelia Pond talks for a solid five minutes about her house. She never pauses except to draw quick breaths. Every minute or so she'll squeeze his hand again.

He's surprised to find himself relaxing. His legs uncurl from his chest and the tension in his shoulders eases. He closes his eyes, listens to her rambling voice, and times his breathing to hers.

Amelia stops talking.

Rory opens his eyes to find her looking at him. She's smiling again. This one isn't her usual, overenthusiastic grin that displays an orthodontist's nightmare. This smile is soft. Almost _fond._ He doesn't know what to think of it.

"Better now?" she asks.

He nods. He's a little light-headed, but the pressure in his chest has eased some. He clears his throat. "Do you remember anything about your parents?"

Amelia shrugs. "Not really," she says. She seems uncomfortable with the subject, but she's even more reluctant to let the silence persist. "I wasn't _that_ little when they died, but I can't… Aunt Sharon showed me pictures once. Their wedding photos. I didn't even recognize their faces."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"No, I… I really am sorry." He's surprised to find that he actually _means_ it. That's weird. He's a psychopath, why should he care? But he understands the feeling you get when you try to remember your mother's face only to discover that you _can't_. "I don't remember mine very well either. I haven't seen them in centu—in a really, _really_ long time."

Amelia squeezes his hand again. Neither of them say anything for a few seconds. Rory keeps breathing. The silence isn't as horrible now that Amelia's eased him into it.

"Thank you," he says. The words feel unfamiliar in his mouth. "For talking. You didn't have to."

"Yeah, I did."

"Why?"

She looks at him like he's an idiot. He's starting to feel like one. "Because you're my friend."

He opens his mouth to repeat the question, _Why?_, but quickly closes it. Humans are funny, he decides. Funny and stupid. If this silly little girl wants to offer her friendship to the masquerading monster, who is he to stop her? It's easier just to accept it and move on, easier not to question it.

Rory tucks his perception filter into his pocket just as Mr. Williams finishes his long-winded conversation with Rory's doctor. The man comes inside, looking weary but happy.

"You ready to go home, Rory?" he asks. He seems a little unsure of himself, maybe even a little scared. Rory doesn't blame him.

"Yup," he says. He hops into the wheelchair and Mr. Williams wheels him out of the hospital. Amelia helps.

It's not until they're in the car that Rory realizes that a _six year old_ just talked him down from a panic attack. That puts a dent in his ego. But hey, at least the Doctor wasn't around to see it.

* * *

><p>Six weeks of domestics follow. Mr. Williams—who now insists that Rory call him <em>Brian<em>—tries to settle into routines as quickly as possible. Rory suspects that he's following some kind of child adoption handbook, relying on a professional's advice due to his own lack of experience. Though Mr. Willi—_Brian_ is naturally wonderful with children, the man takes to doubting himself in critical moments, his own lack of self confidence causing him to appear bumbling and awkward.

So, routines it is, then. Rory is quickly enrolled in school, where he's placed in a class with Amelia and Melody. He spends his days marveling at how stupid human offspring are and absentmindedly wondering whether Cow will find a way out of the wall. The hamster is surprisingly loud for such a little thing, and during recess and lunch, most students stay inside and sit at the wall, calling out for their adored rodent. Cow never responds.

After school is when it gets a little hectic. Brian works, as does Amelia's aunt and Melody's parents, so they set up a schedule for who can look after the kids on what days. On Mondays and Thursdays the trio walk to Amelia's house, on Tuesdays and Fridays they go to Brian's, and on Wednesdays to Melody's. They're supposed to do homework during these hours. Most of the time they goof around, watch TV, or play tag outside.

It's on a Tuesday that Amelia gets sick and doesn't go to school, which means that it's just him, Melody, and Brian at their house. Rory immediately goes to his room, Melody skipping after him, and takes the laser screwdriver parts out from under his bed. He works on it every moment he can, usually when Brian's asleep, but right now the man's downstairs watching some gardening program on TV. He won't be bothering them any time soon.

Melody sits on his bed with her paper and crayons. "That's the Laza-something thing you've been talking about, right?" she asks. They openly speak about alien things when they're alone. Rory gives her updates on the laser screwdriver build, Melody continues to be mysterious and paradox-y about who and what she it. She mentions knowing that he's a Time Lord, and she hints at her knowledge of regeneration, but she refuses to reveal _how_ she knows any of it. "The thing that's supposed to make you older?"

"_Lazarus technology_ implemented with a _laser screwdriver_, yeah," he says. "I'm almost done with it. In a couple hours, I'll look like an adult again and then I'll be out of here."

"And then what?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe I'll go looking for an old enemy of mine. It's been a while since I've messed with him. I'm sure he's missing me." Unless the Doctor thought he was dead. In which case, he'll be happy to give good old Pinstripes a hearts attack when he shows up again. That'll be fun.

Ninety minutes later, he finally hooks up the prototype Lazarus device to his makeshift laser screwdriver. He spends the next few minutes cheering and yelling and hopping around his room while he recklessly waves the delicate invention above his head. Melody looks up from her crayon drawing.

"Are you _sure _that you're not really six?" she asks. "You act like you're six."

"Shut up," he snaps playfully. He's so excited he can hardly breathe. "I won't be six for much longer." He flips on the screwdriver. It buzzes faintly and starts heating up in his hands.

Melody slowly sits up on the edge of his bed. "Shouldn't you test it first?"

He shakes his head. "I had to hook up the Lazarus Technology with a laser screwdriver, remember? Normally the laser's powered by the Time Vortex, but I can't tap into the Vortex's power with the equipment I have. So it takes energy from the passage of time to charge it, about three weeks to one charge. I'm not wasting it on a test run." He adjusts the settings one last time and turns the device to point at himself. "Besides, I've triple-checked the calculations. This'll work." He pauses and bites his lip, thumb hovering over the button. "Wish me luck."

"Don't die," Melody deadpans.

He grins at her narrowed eyes and clicks the button.

He's suddenly on the floor, gasping and sore. He feels like someone—Martha Jones, probably—just hit him with a truck and then backed over him a few times. Forty-seven seconds have passed since he activated the screwdriver, but he doesn't remember a moment of them.

Melody is standing over him. "You passed out, you loser."

"I gathered that," he growls. He tries to lift himself up on his elbows, but quickly gives up, groaning. "How do I look?"

"Pathetic," she says. "And still six years old. So exactly the same, I suppose. Did that thing work _at all?_"

"Feels like it did." He grits his teeth and fights to push himself up to a sitting position. Melody offers her hand and he pointedly ignores it.

"What happened?" she asks.

"Some kind of malfunction, I guess," he says. "Twentieth century Earth tech is faulty at best. It wasn't as… _efficient_ with the power as I thought it'd be."

"So how much did that charge age you?"

He narrows his eyes. "Eighteen... No, nineteen days."

Melody stares at him. "Any way to improve it?"

"Definitely not. There isn't anything I can do with the materials I have, and if I can't get access to anything more powerful…" He blinks as the realization catches up with him. "Oh _god _no."

Melody starts to snicker. "Three weeks to charge and it ages you nineteen days. How fast would you age without it?"

"Minimally," he sighs. "Certainly not enough to make a visible difference."

"Wait a sec, wait." Melody's face is turning red from the effort of holding in her laughter. "So, if you age yourself up _every time _your screwdriver finishes charging, you'd just _barely_ keep up with average human growth?"

He feels sick. "Oh, Rassilon. I'm _stuck_ here," he says. "As a _six year old._ I have to grow up _naturally_ as a _human_."

Melody pats his head. It's part comforting and mostly condescending. "Oh, calm down, Mr. Drama," she says. "You can survive a decade and a half of being human, can't you?"

"No."

She laughs at him. "C'mon! A decade's, like, a pit stop for you."

It's true, of course. A decade's nothing in the long run. That doesn't mean that he has to _like_ it.

"But I have to _pretend to be human!_" he cries. "Humans are so stupid!"

"They're not _that_—"

"Melody, when I was _actually _six years old, I was proficient in calculus and string theory. We're learning about _numbers_ in school. Not even _doing anything_ to the numbers! Just… just _numbers!_"

"So at least it'll be easy for you," Melody says. "Okay? Just calm down, loser. It could be worse."

"_How?_"

"You could be stuck somewhere without Mr. Williams."

Rory almost laughs. "You're kidding, right?"

"He's a nice person."

"He is," Rory readily agrees. "He tries _very hard_ to be a decent parent. But he tries so hard that it's just awkward and weird."

"Give him a chance," Melody says. "He's a _good person_. He's one of the few genuinely _good_ people I've ever met."

"That's great for him," he says with as much sarcasm as he can squeeze into the words. He realizes that he's being mean. He has to remind himself that he doesn't care, that he _is_ mean. "But I'm _not_ a good person, Melody. So I don't really care if Brian is."

She stares at him—that same unnerving, almost judgemental look she gave him when she told him about his future. It almost scares him.

"Just try," she says. "Give him a chance. Promise me that you'll _at least_ give him a chance."

"Why should I?"

Melody shrugs. "Because you're gonna be stuck with him, remember? You might as well try to like him. It might make the whole _human_ thing bearable." A car horn honks outside. Melody starts gathering up her paper and crayons. "That's my mum. Think about it, okay? You might surprise yourself."

* * *

><p>He tries. Sort of. But Brian is still awkwardly aloof and Rory still has no desire to get to know the man, so he doesn't make much progress.<p>

Then Saturday comes. He wakes up, still irritated with the idea of having to live for _years_ as a human, and stuffs the perception filter into his pocket before trotting downstairs for breakfast.

Brian isn't there.

That's a little strange. The man's always been an early riser. He's usually dressed and ready for the day before Rory manages to roll out of bed.

Rory checks the entire downstairs, then peeks into Brian's bedroom, but he's nowhere to be found. He opens the front door. Brian's car is still in the driveway. So he couldn't have gotten far, then.

"Brian!" he calls.

"Over here!"

It's coming from the side yard. Rory cautiously walks around the house and glances around the corner.

There's Brian. The man's kneeling in the dirt with a trowel. He's obviously been out there for a while—half of the dead things in the garden have been uprooted and thrown in a pile by his feet. Behind him are flowers in plastic trays, already half-grown and ready for planting.

"Sorry," Brian says. "I should've told you where I was going, but you were still asleep, and I—" He pauses for half a moment and clears his throat. "I needed to get this done before I… before I decided _not_ to."

"Right," Rory says. He has no idea what Brian's talking about, but if he wants to spend all day playing in the mud, he'll let the man do just that. Rory turns to walk back inside, but doesn't step forward.

_Promise me that you'll _at least _give him a chance._

He sighs and turns back to the idiot in the dirt.

"Do you need some help?" It takes real effort to spit the words out. Melody had better appreciate this.

Brian looks up, surprised. "Yeah," he says, his voice catching on the word. "Yes, sure… Come along, then."

Rory forces himself to walk forward. He wants to go back inside and fiddle uselessly with his laser screwdriver. But Melody was right, he's going to be stuck with Brian for over a decade. He's not expecting to ever _like_ the guy, but at the very least he should be able to pretend to.

Rory sits down at the edge of the grass, as close to the garden as he can get without _actually_ being in the dirt. Brian hands him a spare trowel.

"I've gotten most of the dead plants out already," he says, "but there's still a few more in there. Think you can dig them out?"

He's taken over galaxies with a couple of well-placed uses of hypnosis and a half decent disguise. He's pretty sure he can uproot some plants.

"Yeah," he says instead. "I've got it."

Brian nods and goes back to digging up whatever decayed plant life he was working on before Rory joined him. Rory turns to the plant closest to him—some kind of unidentifiable brown thing with shrivelled vines. He grips the stem with his left hand and uses his right to jab at the ground with his trowel. It's harder work than he thought it would be. The roots are thicker than he expected and his body isn't as strong as he's used to. He has to shift onto his knees for better leverage.

Brian notices his struggles. "Here, it's easier if you—" Brian adjusts Rory's grip on the trowel. "—yeah, like that. And don't just stab the roots, that'll get you nowhere. You want to try to dig _behind_ them—yes, just like that—now try to saw them apart. Tilt the trowel a bit, the edge isn't too sharp but it's better than nothing. That's perfect, Rory."

He feels a strange satisfaction when he finally pulls the dead thing from the ground and tosses it into the pile.

"Why're we planting flowers?" Rory asks as he moves on to the next vine. All of the dead plants look like they were once edible, like seasonal vegetables or berry bushes long past saving. So it's weird that Brian would change over to flowers suddenly.

Brian shrugs. "My wife liked them." There's a lost, almost vacant glint in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Rory says automatically. But it's not the same kind of _sorry _he felt for Amelia. He was sorry for Amelia because he understood the feeling of not being able to remember your parents. He feels something different towards Brian's troubles—a sort of removed pity. Rory doesn't know what it feels like to lose someone because he's never had someone to lose before.

Brian only shakes his head. "No, it's fine. I'm just… I should've gotten to it sooner." He sighs and turns to glare at the ready-to-plant flowers in their little plastic tubs. "It's too late in the season to grow anything from seeds, so I had to get _those_."

Rory snorts. The absolute hatred in the man's voice is almost comical. "Aren't they easier, though?"

"Exactly! It takes all the fun out of it," Brian says. He's practically pouting. "I feel like I'm cheating."

He's so serious about it, so emphatic in his reasoning. And the more enthusiastic he becomes about this dull hobby, the _funnier_ it gets. Brian can rant about the pride in growing things from seeds and then, in the next breath, explain in detail the importance of certain pH levels in fertilizer. His pure enthusiasm is almost endearing—in an irritatingly _human_ way, of course.

They eventually manage to clear the garden of dead plants. Despite the hours of digging, Brian is more relaxed than he's been in weeks. The man appears to have gained some kind of strange confidence now that he's finally in his element. The awkwardness and his tedious habit of second-guessing his every word and action have faded.

Rory finds himself actually _talking_ to Brian. Normally simple communication wouldn't be a big deal, but this regeneration feels more antisocial than his others, more withdrawn and level-headed. The only actual conversations he's had have been with Melody and Amelia.

So talking to Brian is almost refreshing. Whereas Melody deflects his relentless prodding with a smile and a few mysterious words, Rory feels that he could ask the man about any detail of his life and Brian would not fail to answer. Brian's age also makes him a better conversationalist than the six year old Amelia, whose small vocabulary and obsession with Disney is starting to grate on Rory's nerves.

"Okay, I think those are good," Brian finally says as he surveys the couple dozen holes in the dirt. "You want to grab the flowers? I need to make a few of these a little wider."

Rory gives him a playful salute, which only flicks dirt into his own face. He's coated up to his elbows in the stuff and his trousers aren't much better. He can't remember the last time he was this filthy.

Brian looks him over and seems to be thinking along the same lines. "You're taking a bath after this."

Rory makes a whining sound in the back of his throat. "Do I _have_ to?" He doesn't understand why human children despise cleanliness so much, but it seems like most of them think they're allergic to soap. It's a law of the universe: every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, matter cannot be created nor destroyed, and children hate baths. He has no choice but to follow it.

Brian, at least, seems a little amused by his antics. "_Yes,_" he says, "you have to take a bath."

"Yeah, okay. But do I have to do it right away, or…?" Brian gives him a look. "Is 'or' not an option?"

Brian rolls his eyes. The man is trying very hard to look serious, but he's trying even harder not to laugh. "Just go get the flowers, you cheeky thing."

"I'm _hilarious_." Rory gets up. His legs are numb and unsteady from kneeling in the dirt for so long, so his short walk to the flowers looks more like a stumbling totter.

"Need some help walking there, son?"

"I've got it. Just make sure that all the digging doesn't throw out your back, old man."

Brian folds over laughing. Rory imagines that his snippy comments must sound funnier when coming from the mouth of a six year old. Not that that's saying much—humans find anything involving small children and/or fuzzy animals to be absolutely hilarious. Rory still doesn't understand the appeal.

He finally reaches the flowers. "Which colour should we use first?"

"Whichever one you want, Rory."

Rory's hands pause over the red ones. There's a tingling in the back of his head, the fuzziness of a paradox mixed with the feeling of someone watching him. He glances up through the corner of his eye, and there, just down the street, is a man in a long blue coat.

_Lay low here for a bit. When this all blows over, I'll come back for you. Okay?_

Well, it certainly took the Freak long enough. Long enough for Rory to forget that he was even supposed to come back…

To his credit, he was expecting to be long gone by the time the Freak got around to returning for him. Rory didn't think that he'd have to deal with him again.

"Rory?" Brian asks.

He looks at Brian, who is still turned away as he works on the holes for the flowers, and then back down the street. Is the Freak going to take him somewhere? To Torchwood Three, maybe? Or just to somewhere that the Freak deems "safer" for an alien child?

Rory is suddenly struck with the thought that he _doesn't want to go._ He can't leave behind the laser screwdriver he's worked so hard to build. He can't leave Melody, whose past is somehow entangled with his future and whose secrets he still needs to uncover. He can't leave _Brian._ Melody said that he was going to be important, that he would _matter_ to Rory one day. He can't leave the man behind before he figures out how and why that happens.

Then again, going with the Freak might prove useful. He's the leader of Torchwood Three, which means he has access to alien technology. Alien technology is just what Rory needs to connect his screwdriver to the Time Vortex, just what he needs to finally charge the implemented Lazarus device and age himself up to a proper adult. Then he could slip away and track down the Doctor before the Freak even knew he was gone.

The Freak doesn't move for a long time.

"Rory?" Brian repeats. "You okay?"

"Y—yeah. Just… just trying to decide what kind of flower to plant."

"It must be a truly agonizing decision." There's sarcasm in his voice, but it's not rude or mean. Rory doesn't think that the man possesses an unkind bone in his body.

"Absolutely torturous," he agrees solemnly. "I don't think I can handle this kind of responsibility."

Brian plays along. "True, true. This could affect the rest of your life, after all."

Rory's eyes never leave the Freak's. "You have no idea."

From down the street, the Freak waves at him shortly. He looks unsure of himself, like he wasn't expecting Rory to have set up some semblance of a life while he was away. Now he's hesitating over the decision as much as Rory is.

"Well," Brian says, "I was thinking we could put the blue ones towards the front. Those flowers grow a little shorter than the others, so it'd layer nicely once they're fully grown."

"Sounds like a plan."

The Freak takes a half step back. He shrugs and raises his eyebrows in a silent question. _Do you want to come with me or stay with him?_ The Freak thinks that he's some harmless Tenza, accustomed to integrating himself into a family unit and then living the rest of his life normally and easily. He's giving Rory an out, if he needs one, but is leaving the bulk of the decision up to him.

Rory hesitates. _This is my way out of here,_ he thinks. _I don't have to go through a decade of this. I can stop pretending to be human, stop pretending to be six. I can stop _being _six. But then_—

He shakes his head and picks up the blue flowers for Brian. It's not because he wants to stay, of course, because he obviously doesn't. But he has to stay. He has to because he's not sure if the Freak would even take him to Torchwood Three, if he would even be alone long enough to get the technology together to improve his screwdriver. There are too many variables, too many things that could go wrong. At least if he stays, he's in control of the situation. He knows what'll happen to him if he stays.

The Freak nods his understanding. He grins, waves goodbye, and then spins on his heel fast enough for his coat to flap behind him.

And Melody thinks that _he's_ dramatic.

"You have the flowers, Rory?"

"Yeah," he says. He glances one more time up the street, but the Freak has already vanished. Oh, yes. Very dramatic. "Yeah, I've got them."

"Bring them over, then."

Rory sighs exasperatingly, trying to emulate the attitude of a child asked to do something by an authority figure. "You're so impatient."

"I'm perfectly patient," Brian banters back. "I'm an adult. I'm always patient. _You_, on the other hand, are being slow."

Rory drops the flower tin onto the dirt. "Okay, sure. Fine. Now how do we plant these?"

"Well, the hardest part is getting them out without hurting the roots."

Rory sits and pretends to listen. A decade and a half. He has to survive _fifteen years_ of this. And he can't even complain about it now, not after he's had a possible way out and chosen not to take it...

Oh well. He once spent a few years as the basic equivalent of a reanimated corpse, so it's not like being human is the _worst_ thing he's ever had to live through. He'll get through these years and then run off and forget about it, like nothing ever happened. It'll be easy.

* * *

><p>He's wrong, of course. He is so, so wrong. And it all starts on the day that Amelia Pond gets a crack in her wall.<p> 


	4. Becoming Rory Williams (2 of 3)

**A/N:** I'd like to thank you all for the wonderful support I've been getting for this story! You're all fantastic and I hope you enjoy this new chapter.

* * *

><p>"How long has <em>that<em> been there?" Melody asks. She looks tense and on edge. Amelia shrugs.

"A while," she says. "I didn't want to make a big deal of it, because Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack. But now there's _voices_ at night and I don't know what to do."

Melody pivots to stare at where he's sitting against Amelia's bed. "Any ideas on what it could be, _Rory?_"

He doesn't look up from his crayon drawing of scribbled Gallifreyan symbols. He's trying to translate a name, but it's always difficult to write names in Gallifreyan. The words aren't pretty-sounding syllables strung together for the purposes of identification, like human names are. Gallifreyan names describe the way that an individual affects the flow of time. They're stupidly long, technical, and can detail an entire person's existence, which is why they're usually a secret.

He's trying to translate Melody's name in an attempt to get more information on her. The name might tell how their timelines intersect and why she's important to him later. But every time he feels like he's getting a sense of her timeline, it slips away before he can find the right words.

"_Rory!_"

"I'm busy," he snaps. He has a few scrawled symbols in place. Something about angels and astronauts and silence. The phrase "born to kill" doesn't surprise him too much, because she _does_ associate with him, and he's not exactly one of the good guys. But it tells quite a lot about her. He's just not sure what to make of it yet.

The paper is suddenly snatched from his hands. He glares up at Melody's angry eyes.

"I was working on something!"

"Now you're working on something else." Melody steps aside and points at the wall. "What is that thing?"

He stares at it and his stomach churns. It's painful to look at directly—almost like when he first saw the Freak. That's a little strange because he's in a _child's_ body. He thought he'd be less responsive to the inconsistencies in time, nearly deaf to the flow of the universe, but it's actually the opposite. His sensitivity to time has skyrocketed. Maybe it's because the drums aren't clouding his thoughts.

"A crack," he says. "They don't happen too often, but it's nothing to worry about. Just a crack."

Sharon yells something from downstairs. Amelia rolls her eyes and offers to go and see what she wants. Melody and Rory say nothing. She leaves.

"What is that thing?" Melody hisses.

"I _told_ you, it's a crack."

"That's no crack."

"Because it—" Rory pauses. He tilts his head to one side and squints, trying to picture the way time flows around her. "Are you time sensitive?"

"That doesn't matter!" Melody growls. He doesn't know which is distressing her more—the crack or the not knowing about the crack. "_What is it?_"

But he ignores her, too caught up in this new fact. _Very_ few aliens are time sensitive. But if she is, then that means—

"That's how you found me," he murmurs, figuring it out as he says it. "You didn't just happen upon me. You felt the Time Vortex open up and spit me out. You woke up Brian to come and get me." He would've died of hypothermia had Melody not found him—and so soon after the faulty regeneration, he would've died for good.

But he's not going to tell Melody that. He doesn't want to owe her anything.

"_Rory._"

"Calm down," he says. "For the third time, _it's a crack._ You're just freaking out this much because the crack isn't in the wall. It's in _time_." He glances up at the ragged scar across the plaster. "Two incompatible points in the Time Vortex collided with each other and left a crack behind. That thing will wreak havoc on our time sensitivities, and you'll feel sick if you're in the same room for too long, but that should be the extent of the damage. If it really bothers you, I can use my next laser charge to close it. Easy fix. Nothing to worry about."

Melody relaxes. The explanation seems to be enough for her. "Thanks. I'd appreciate it."

"Great. Now give me back my paper. I was working on something."

Melody laughs and relinquishes the crayon drawing. She sits beside him, watching as he adds another large circle and overlaps it with a smaller one. "You've been with us for a year, you know. You don't have to pretend anymore."

"Pretend what?"

"That you don't care."

His hand pauses over the next line. "I _don't_ care." He tries to ignore her in favor of glancing over what he's just created. It's the last word of Melody's name, the final piece of her timeline.

_Library._

"Sure you don't, Rory. Sure you don't."

* * *

><p>"Rory!"<p>

Rory pauses on the steps up to the school building and looks over his shoulder. Amelia Pond is racing straight for him.

"Rory!" she yells again, even though she knows that she has his attention. "_Rory!_ _RoryRoryRoryRoryRoryRoryRory!_" She just barely skids to a halt beside him. Then, exhausted from the run, she folds forward with her hands on her knees, gasping for air.

"Don't have a heart attack," he says.

"I'm not!" she pants. Amelia manages to stand up again, grinning madly. "I'm just excited!"

"Really? I had no idea." His sarcasm goes right over the little girl's head.

"You'll never guess what happened last night!"

"You found out where your Aunt Sharon hid the cookie jar? Then ate them all right before coming here?"

"No! No no no, cooler than that!"

"Cooler than cookies?" _Nothing_ is more interesting to human children than sweets. This must be big. "What happened?"

"There was a box," Amelia says in a single rushed breath. "There was a box, and the box _said_ 'Police' but the man wasn't police, and he was really weird and he ate fish fingers and custard and fixed the crack in my wall but Prisoner Zero got out and—"

"Breathe," Rory reminds her. Amelia stops to gasp twice. "Now _what's_ going on?"

Amelia's smile nearly breaks her face. "A man crashed his time machine into my shed!"

Rory stares at her. His hearts are beating fast, but he doesn't want to jump to conclusions. This is another one of her games. _Surely_ this is just some vivid dream or a strange, coincidental imagining from her mind. "What was his name?"

"The Doctor!" Amelia cries. Rory fights to keep his jaw from dropping. He feels like he's about to have a stroke, but Amelia blunders on obliviously. "His name's the Doctor, and he has a big blue box that's a _time machine._ There's a swimming pool in it, too, but the swimming pool's in the library… I don't know how it all fits, though, because the box isn't that big."

Rory clears his throat and tries to make himself feel less light-headed. _The Doctor_ was here. But why would he come _here?_ There's nothing in Leadworth, at least nothing remotely dangerous or alien barring himself and maybe Melody. But the Doctor didn't crash into his backyard, or even hers. He crashed into _Amelia's._

"Where is he now?" Rory asks, because he has to prioritize his questions. School is going to start soon and Amelia's attention span tends to be fickle. There's no telling how long she'll want to talk about any one thing, even something as crazy as a mad man and his magic box.

"His time machine was broken, so he left to go fix it," she says.

_Broken?_ What the hell did he do to the TARDIS? It takes a lot to damage a time machine—Time Lords build things to last.

"But _where did he go?_"

"Into the future," Amelia says matter-of-factly. "He said it would stabilize the engines. He promised it would only take five minutes, but he hasn't come back yet. I think he messed up."

Well duh. What was that idiot thinking, promising he would return in a handful of minutes? Time travel is a finicky art, made _exponentially_ more difficult with a damaged ship. He must've overshot his destination by days, maybe even months or years.

This is bad news for Rory. If pretending to be human isn't difficult enough, now he has to do it knowing that _the Doctor_ could show up at any moment. Not that that's entirely a bad thing—he would have to suffer the embarrassment of getting caught in this stupid child's body, but at least then he'd have access to a time machine. Maybe.

"What did he look like?" Rory asks. Most Doctors would probably be amused by his situation and leave him behind to deal with it himself. But a later regeneration, a face that had been through the Time War and craved the comfort of his own species again…

_That_ Doctor couldn't leave him.

Amelia shrugs. "He looked… weird, I guess."

"Like a _he had an obsession with wearing question marks and celery_ weird or a _his rainbow coat nearly blinded me _weird?" Amelia looks at him like he's lost his mind. "Neither of those? _Really? _Okay, uh… any chance he was wearing a pinstripe suit?"

Please, _please_ let it be Pinstripes. That face's stupid, infinite mercy would be very helpful.

But Amelia still looks confused. "I… I _think_ he was, but it was all torn up. He looked really raggedy."

_Raggedy?_ That was new. Especially for Pinstripes, who seemed to take pride in his perfect hair and overall appearance. The only time he'd seen Pinstripes look less than presentable was during the Year that Never Was.

Well, _and_ the last time they'd seen each other, after the moron had decided to make a dramatic entrance via crashing through the glass ceiling with a loaded gun. The fall had certainly scratched up his clothes. And his skin.

"Were his eyes brown?" Rory asks. "And his hair? And was it sort of… I dunno, spiky?"

His very _precise_ questions continue to baffle Amelia. "His hair was brown, but it was kinda floppy." Could still be Pinstripes, then. "And his eyes were green." And there goes all of his hopes and drea—wait, _green?_

Rory frowns. "You sure?"

"Yeah."

He's seen the Doctor old, young, blond, brunette, graying, suave, dressed like a hobo, blue-eyed and brown. But _never_ with green eyes. This is a new face, someone he's never seen before.

The good news is that he has to be post-Time War, and may still be yearning for Time Lord companionship enough to let his guard down and allow Rory to steal the TARDIS. The bad news is that he has no idea what to expect from him, _including_ whether he still wants to be around his own species. For all he knows, this Doctor may have gained some unexpected craving for genocide.

With a newfound appreciation, he focuses on the little girl grinning at him. Rory has no idea what this new face may hold. But from what he's heard so far, it seems like Amelia's already had a merry little adventure with him that ended with an invitation to become his newest companion. She's his only connection to the Doctor's new face.

And just like that, Amelia Pond becomes the most important person in his life.

"Tell me exactly what happened," Rory says. "Start from the beginning." Amelia, happy for the attention, obliges.

She starts with her prayer to Santa (earlier that week she'd found the word _religion_ in a book she was reading. She'd asked what it meant, and Rory had tried to explain the basics of human Christianity, but she must've misunderstood him when he'd attempted to tie it back to Christmas). She excitedly talks about how the Doctor crashed his time machine into her shed and touches on how strange he was behaving, mentioning his cravings and odd twitches. Rory recognizes the signs of a recent regeneration readily enough.

Which is just _perfect,_ really. As if a new face isn't enough to deal with, the recent regeneration will only serve to complicate the matter. Great.

Melody runs up just as Amelia is getting to the part about the crack in her wall. Then, of course, she has to start _all over again_ because Melody wasn't there to hear the first ten minutes of the story.

"What story?" Melody asks.

"The Doctor crashed his time machine in my backyard!"

Melody flinches. "The _what?_"

"The Doctor!" Amelia exclaims. "You'll see, I'll get to that part. But it started last night when I was praying to Santa—"

Melody doesn't look like she's listening. In fact, she looks about as shocked as _he_ must've looked when Amelia first blurted out the name. Melody must know about the Doctor somehow—which is some grand, new mystery in itself, but Rory's not going to ask her about it. Melody never answers his questions, and when she _does_, she only reveals cryptic phrases that make him more confused than when he started.

Honestly, he should just assume that Melody knows everything. It'll make his life a lot easier.

Amelia only gets to the part about carving a face in an apple before they're interrupted again, this time by the bell ringing. Rory starts to herd them into the building when something strange occurs to him.

"You said that your mom carved the faces into apples, right?" he asks. Amelia shrugs.

"Yeah. She did. She did a lot of stuff like that."

"But you said…"

Nearly a year ago, in the hospital, Amelia Pond had confessed to him that she didn't remember a thing about her parents. Not even their faces. She hadn't been lying then—children rarely lie about _not_ knowing something. So where had this memory suddenly come from?

"The crack," Rory realizes. "Amelia, what did the Doctor do to the crack?"

"He closed it with his little stick thing. Why? Is it important?"

Rory nearly growls in frustration. Of course Amelia wouldn't know the specifics; the Doctor had just flashed his sonic over the crack and it'd vanished. There was no telling _how_ the Doctor closed it, or if he did it properly. Or maybe Amelia's dysfunctional memory had nothing to do with the Doctor and everything to do with the presence of the crack in the first place. Maybe it was more dangerous than he'd first thought it to be.

There's no way of telling now, though. The Doctor had closed it up. It's gone. Unless…

"Rory?" Melody asks. She's starting to look worried.

"It's nothing," he says. He'll figure something out. Maybe it left a residue behind, or some kind of aftershock that he can analyze. He can enlist Melody's help to keep Amelia out of her room so he can run the tests. It'll be difficult, sure, but he thinks he can—

Oh. Oh, dammit. Melody was right.

He _does_ care.

How the hell did that happen?

* * *

><p>The Doctor doesn't come back that day. Or the next. Or the next.<p>

As the weeks pass, Amelia starts making up stories about herself and the _Raggedy Doctor_. Then she starts writing them down. Pretty soon she's drawing comics to go along with them.

Her growing obsession scares her Aunt Sharon, who sends her to a physiatrist a few months later. Amelia comes to school the next day, perfectly content, and tells him and Melody about how she bit the poor man and now isn't allowed back into his office. Rory laughs so hard he cries.

In that time, he's managed to scan her room with his laser screwdriver, but the results are vague and inconclusive. It's almost like the crack is still _there_, but it also _isn't_ at the same time. He has no idea what to make of it. But Amelia's okay despite spending so many months so close to a time abnormality, so he decides that it doesn't matter. The memory reconstruction might be a coincidence, and her brain functions haven't drastically changed since the Doctor closed the crack. There doesn't seem to be anything to worry about.

He hopes.

* * *

><p>Rory glances up across the kitchen table. Melody is doodling in her math homework again.<p>

"Focus," he reminds her.

"But it's so _boring_," she whines. She scribbles another flower in the margins.

Amelia, already done with her work, is in the other room with Brian. She's in the middle of her fourth Raggedy Doctor comic and has decided to read the man all eighty-two pages. Rory and Melody have already heard it. Three times.

"You forgot to carry the seven," Rory says. "In problem five. It's multiplication, Melody, why're you messing it up?"

"You are too!" she says, pointing at his nearly completed worksheet. All of his twos are written backwards and every sixth problem is incorrect.

"Yeah. I'm doing it on _purpose_," he says. He's been doing a lot of stupid things on purpose—like getting poor marks on spelling tests and counting numbers on his fingers, all in an effort to appear human. It shouldn't really matter because he keeps the perception filter on him; he could probably tell everyone that he's an alien and they wouldn't question it or do anything about it. But Torchwood is still out there, and he doesn't want to take the chance of someone noticing. "I can't be a _complete_ genius, that would attract too much attention. But you're actually messing up."

"I'm fine."

"Never said you weren't." He shrugs and goes back to his own problems. Rory's learned that if he wants Melody to speak, all he has to do is just say nothing. She gets so frustrated by the silence that she'll do anything to get the conversation moving again. It almost reminds him of himself when he was her age.

"It's just…" Melody begins. Rory looks up, so she knows that he's listening. "The numbers _don't make sense._ I think it's because I'm not human. My brain isn't meant for English, so when everything is explained _in English…_"

"…The logic isn't clear?"

"Exactly."

It's a plausible explanation. Some aliens have trouble comprehending ideas expressed in latin-based Earth languages. But he still has no idea what Melody is, so there's no telling what she _would_ understand.

"Do you want some help?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"No…?"

Rory bites his tongue to stop himself from laughing. Melody is almost as stubborn as Amelia. "I can help, if you want. Do you have any idea what language _will_ make sense to you?"

"No."

"Perfect. Well… Okay. Okay, we'll figure something out." He pauses for half a second, then tears out a piece of binder paper from his school notebook. He stands up and moves to Melody's side of the table, where he puts down the paper and leans over it. "I'm going to write out a few common alien languages, just some numbers or something. Tell me if any of them look familiar."

"Got it."

He starts with the current universal standard. When Melody doesn't say anything, he scribbles down a Raxacoricofallapatorian number system. Then the basic Silurian counting method. Then a Carrionite poem. Then he breaks all rules of time and tries the previous five universal standards followed by the next three. Melody still doesn't say anything. He gets bored and starts scribbling Circular Gallifreyan at the bottom.

"That one!"

Rory almost jumps. "Inside voice," he snaps jokingly. She shoves at his shoulder. "Which one?"

"The bottom bit. That circle-thing."

"You can't understand that."

"No, not really, but it… it _feels_ right, you know?"

"Melody, I can't teach you that," he says. "If you think English is complicated, then this will drive you mad. It's one of the hardest languages in the universe."

She leans back in her chair and sniffs poshly. "Try me."

"Melody. This is the language _time travellers_ use. Do you have any idea how many tenses you need when you travel in time?" He doesn't let her answer. "Twenty-seven. Over half of them are for clearing up where you are in your timeline as compared to the other person's. The other half are for when you're referring to parallel dimensions, changed timelines that no longer exist, or fixed points."

"Great. Teach me."

He stares at her for a long moment. She raises one eyebrow challengingly. "_Fine._ I'll teach you. But you're not going to understand it."

She understands it. Gallifreyan comes as easy to her as breathing, every tense and word, spoken or written, she _gets_ it. It takes a while—almost a year, actually—but suddenly she starts passing notes to Rory during class. They're all written in Circular Gallifreyan.

He gets excited. He hasn't spoken his own language in so long, he was almost afraid he would forget it. Now he and Melody practice almost every day, usually over schoolwork. Rory explains math and science to her in Gallifreyan and she understands the concepts better. Rory doesn't know if it's due to the language change or if Melody just _listens_ to him and not the teachers. He doesn't really care.

He tries to teach her Old High Gallifreyan as well, but she doesn't take to it as easily. The speech is ancient and outdated, even for him, and it's the most technical language the universe has to offer. Old High Gallifreyan was made specifically to communicate things that couldn't be understood telepathically, like complex physics and the technicalities of space travel. This meant that discussing the current lowering barometric pressure of the atmosphere was much easier to say than _Hey, it looks like it's going to rain._

"Yeah," Melody finally says one day, "I'm not learning this."

"That's fine," he says. "I'm just surprised you picked up on Circular Gallifreyan so easily. This was a long-shot anyway."

Melody squirms a bit, biting her lip.

"What?"

"Can you… can you just teach me two words? Two specific ones?"

"Depends. What words?"

"_Hello Sweetie._"

They stare at each other for a long time.

"You want me," Rory says slowly, "to teach you how to say _Hello Sweetie_ in the most ancient and sacred language of my nearly extinct species?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of writing it, but hey, if you want to teach me how to say it too…"

"Melody Malone, that is _the most _disrespectful and blasphemous idea I have ever heard. Let's do it."

* * *

><p>So he grows up. He keeps teaching Melody Gallifreyan. He puts up with Amelia's growing obsession with the "Raggedy Doctor". On weekends he sits outside with Brian, absentmindedly listening to the man reminisce about his life as they dig through the dirt. It's hardly the most <em>exciting<em> life he's ever lived, but it's nice. Peaceful. He's never experienced that before.

He dresses up as the Doctor for Halloween one year. Brian thinks that it's adorable. Melody laughs when she sees him and Amelia hugs him so hard he can barely breathe. She then proceeds to call him "Doctor" for the rest of the day. That gets old rather fast, but he just keeps reminding himself of how happy she was when she first saw him. It was worth it.

Maybe that's what Melody is thinking about when she calls him. Maybe she remembers how ecstatic he and Amelia were that day, how their excitement created some kind of exponential feedback loop between them until they reached a peak of hyper exuberance that put Melody's disorderly behaviour to shame. Maybe she remembers how _happy_ they make each other.

"_Get over here. Right now_." It's not the _greatest_ thing Melody's ever opened a conversation with, but it's certainly not the most dire.

Rory shifts his English homework over to get a better grip on the phone at his ear.

"Are you getting arrested?" he asks. Even though they're only fourteen, Melody's been getting more and more rebellious in recent months. Rory doesn't exactly approve of her criminal behaviour, but he hasn't attempted to talk her out of it. Amelia will give her a good lecture now and again about not doing bad things. Rory, knowing from experience that Melody won't stop until she wants to, actually taught her how to shoplift without getting caught. He's hoping that possessing some skill in the subject will at least keep her out of trouble.

"_It's Amelia_."

"Did you get _her_ arrested?"

"_No! Rory, no one's getting arrested._"

"Then why're you calling me?" He has a five page essay due tomorrow on a book he's _determined_ not to bother reading. Human literature bores him to no end.

"_Something happened. I think her aunt Sharon said something or did something and..._" Melody's voice is coated in upset frustration. "_I don't know, she won't talk to me. Will you just come over and help her?_"

"If she's so upset, what makes you think she'll talk to _me?_"

"_Because it's you._"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"_My god, you really have no idea, do you?_" Her tone is exasperated, but her voice is soft. "_You're the smartest person I know, Rory, but you're so _stupid _sometimes that it's not even funny._"

"I'm sorry. I thought you needed my help with something. But if you called just to make fun of me—"

"_Rory!_" Melody snaps. "_Quit being a moron and come over already. Because right now she's just sitting on that stupid tire swing outside and staring into space. I don't know what to do._"

Rory heaves a long sighs, like this is a big deal for him and he doesn't want to help. In reality, he's already packed away his English homework and is in the process of putting on his shoes.

He _likes_ Amelia. They've seen each other almost every day for eight years, it'd be weird if he _hadn't _formed some kind of emotional attachment to her. At least, that's what he keeps telling himself.

"You are _so bad_ with human emotions," Rory says.

"_They're weird!_" Melody insists. "_So are you coming over or not? Because if you don't, I'm going to have to go outside and do something._"

"Please don't," Rory says. "She's already upset. She doesn't need to be crying as well."

"_That was_ one _time—_"

"On her _birthday,_ Melody."

"_That wasn't _my _fault! And I told you, call me Mels._"

Rory rolls his eyes. _Again_ with the stupid nickname.

"_Melody_ sounds like a pretty song. _Mels_ is a bastardization of Melissa," he says. They've been having this argument for months now. Amelia thinks it's hilarious and often goes back and forth on the issue solely to rile them up. "Listen, just stay where you are, I'll be there in a second." He hangs up before she can respond and walks out the front door.

"Brian!" he calls in the direction of the side yard. "I'm going to Melody's!"

The man appears from around the corner of the house, his hands and trousers coated in dirt from the garden. "What happened to that essay you were complaining about earlier?" he asks.

Oh, Brian. It's _adorable_ when he tries to be a responsible parent.

"Melody just called. Amelia's really upset about something and Melody wants me to come talk to her."

Brian's face softens. He's had a soft spot for Amelia since they were all kids, so Rory knows what he's going to say before he even opens his mouth.

"Come back before dark."

Rory grins. "I will!" he calls over his shoulder as he takes off down the street.

Melody's house is on the corner, so he's there in less than a minute. He bypasses the front door entirely with the confidence of someone who's done this far too many times and walks directly towards the gate at the side of the house. The Malone's yard is fenced in, the only gate latched shut on the other side. Rory stands on his tiptoes and reaches over the fence, finding the latch with practiced ease, and swings the door open.

He remembers doing the very same thing quite a bit when he was too short to reach over the gate. Back then, Amelia had to help him climb onto one of the garbage cans so he could get the latch. It was a flawless system until one day when he slipped off and broke his arm. Fun times.

Just like Melody said, he finds Amelia sitting on the old tire swing in the backyard. Melody's parents set it up when they were kids, but they haven't used it in years. Not since they all had a go on it after eating about three pounds Halloween candy…

Melody had barely managed not to throw up, but he and Amelia had spent the next few minutes moaning and barfing over the base of the tree. After that they were all scared to try it again—even years after the fact.

So it's strange to find her here now, staring aimlessly into space.

Rory approaches, but she doesn't even look up. He sighs. "Scoot over."

"You're not gonna _fit_," Amelia mutters, but she slides over as much as he can.

Huh. It's not as big as he remembers. The tire is held up horizontally by three knotted ropes. This meant that, back when they actually used the thing, there was one rope for each of them to grab on to while they tried to find space to sit or stand or kneel while attempting to ruthlessly shove the others off. Now, with just Amelia sitting on it, there's barely enough room for him to perch on the end. They're growing up. That's weird.

He shrugs it off and manages to squeeze himself onto the edge. This immediately causes several balancing issues that nearly knock Amelia to the ground. She squeaks and throws her arms around one of the rope supports, which in turn almost throws Rory from the swing. He grabs onto the closest rope and, out of habit, shoves at her. She tips, but doesn't fall, and easily shoves him back.

Two minutes later, they're laughing and pushing at each other. Amelia has both of her legs wrapped around one end of the tire and a solid grip on a rope. Rory has his arm thrown around his own rope and is sitting haphazardly on the other end of the tire, trying to push Amelia over with both feet at the same time. This technique nearly knocks him over more than once, but each time Amelia grabs his foot and steadies him before he can face-plant into the dirt.

Eventually they both have to stop because they're laughing so hard.

"Better now?" Rory asks when he gets his breath back. Amelia nods, still gasping for air. Her eyes are tearing up and she wipes at them carefully with her sleeve.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I'm good. Thanks."

"You sure?" Rory asks. More often than not, he's finding that he actually _cares_ about what Amelia has to say. He doesn't know why—she's annoying, boring, and _human_. But she's also sweet. And imaginative. And funny. And clever. And, now that she's grown up a bit, _incredibly_ pretty. He tries not to think about it too much.

"Yeah, I mean…" Amelia stops. She takes a deep breath and the smile starts to slip from her face. "He's not coming back, is he?"

"Who?"

"Don't," Amelia pleads. "You _know_ who."

"Voldemort?"

She snorts out a stifled giggle and smacks him again. The push is unexpected and he starts to fall backward, arms pinwheeling wildly. Later he will deny the high-pitched squeak that slips out from behind his clenched teeth. Amelia rescues him at the last second by grabbing his shirt collar and pulling him back to safety.

"You're so clumsy," she laughs.

"You _pushed_ me."

"_You_ deserved it."

"_How?_" he asks, feigning wide-eyed innocence. "I was just asking a simple question before _you_ viciously attacked me."

"I was trying to be serious, you ass!" Amelia snaps, but she's still smiling and there's no heat behind the words.

"Then feel free to be serious," Rory says, propping his chin up with his hand. "You have my full attention now."

"No more joking?"

"I will try to contain myself." She rolls her eyes at him and he grins.

"I was _talking_ about the Doctor," Amelia says. Rory's grin falters a bit.

"I know. What about him?"

Amelia pauses over her next words, considers them carefully. "I made him up," she decides, "didn't I? He never existed. And I've spent seven years waiting for him, hoping that one day he'd just… fall out of the sky. Like nothing happened, like no time had passed at all. Like it really _was_ some stupid mistake on his end, that it really _would've been_ five minutes for him, and then we'd fly off together in his magic time machine."

She doesn't speak for a few seconds. Rory tries to wrap his head around what she's saying.

"So that's it, then?" he asks. "You're giving up on him? Just like that?"

Amelia sighs. "It's _stupid_, Rory. I had this… this really crazy, vivid dream when I was seven and I've let it take over my life." She looks him in the eye. "Come on. The whole thing was stupid and unrealistic and couldn't have really happened_. _Don't tell me that you actually _believed_ me."

Rory shrugs carefully. "I always believe you."

That seems to surprise her. She stares at his face for a long moment, searching for a lie that isn't there. "Well," she finally concedes, "you're the only one, then."

She doesn't look away from his face. Uncomfortable under her scrutiny, Rory looks away, back towards the house. He sees Melody through one of the back windows, watching them with her face pressed up against the glass, and almost laughs.

"We've got a spy," he warns.

Amelia follows his gaze. "Looks like it." She untangles herself from the tire swing and stands up carefully. "Come on, then. Let's go back inside before she comes out and tries to get us _all_ on this stupid thing."

Rory laughs. "That'd be an adventure." He slides off and gives her a playful bow. "After you, Amelia Pond."

Amelia considers it for a moment. Then she decides, "Call me Amy."

"What? Why?"

"Amelia Pond is too… fairy tale." He feels like he's missing something. She seems to read the confusion on his face. "Amelia is the kind of girl who'd sit outside all night waiting for someone who clearly isn't coming. Amy isn't."

Rory nods. He understands what it's like to change so dramatically so quickly that you feel the need to change your name as well. He hasn't thought of himself as _the Master_ in years.

"Okay," he says. "After you, then, Amy Pond."

She grins at him, happy for his support, and skips ahead. Halfway to the house, Rory realizes that if he starts calling Amelia by a nickname, Melody will demand the same. He's going to have to start calling her _Mels._

Oh, _Rassilon._


End file.
